Sunday, November 14, 2004

An article in today's New York Times looks at the offshore Cape Wind project proposed off Cape Cod in Massachusetts (see previous post).

And several environmental organizations have found themselves in the unaccustomed position of praising the Corps of Engineers, which many have criticized in the past as being too quick to approve development projects.

"At first, obviously, it was pretty frightening because of their history," said Kert Davies, United States research director for Greenpeace, which favors the project. But he added, "I think the effort was very solid, and they were under a lot of scrutiny."

Apparently Mr. Davies is serious. The Corps of Engineers has eagerly approved this development, consistent with its Greenpeace-criticized record. But now Greenpeace also supports this 24-square-mile industrial complex, so the Corps has done a "solid" job.

And in another example of the decline of journalism, the Times echos the idea that this in an "environmental" project:

The 4,000-page draft gives new support to environmental groups that praise the project as a safe, nonpolluting and desperately needed alternative to fossil fuel power plants. But opponents challenge the report, the process that produced it and the idea of building the turbine array in the first place.

There is no mention that many environmental groups (see SafeWind and Save Our Sound for some of them) and environmentalist individuals oppose the project. A vegetarian isn't vegetarian if he or she eats chicken occasionally. And an environmentalist should no longer be called such when he or she supports the work of developers.

[See the next post for how ridiculous the claim is that such projects will reduce fossil fuel burning.]